a Muse well stifled...

Last night I had an unfamiliar but welcome Muse come upon me. I was inspired to draw out my future idealistic backyard (with all the trimmings) from the perspective of sitting on my not-yet-existent back porch. It was meant to be an exercise in sketching, but rapidly digressed into an exercise in futility. I loaded the CD player with Carla Bruni and the Zambian Boys a capella Gospel Choir, a seemingly dichotomous pair that doesn't clash at all when you don't speak any french or any indigenous African languages, even if their world views are polar opposites.

So, as I felt the inspiration come on me, eerily reminiscent of days before I knew my Savior, when my Muses were most often escorted to me by illegal substances, I welcomed it; glad for the temporary solace from perpetually being obligated to consider level, plumb, square, and watertight, though I seldom seek such relief, I thought it would feel good to pour out some of my right brain out onto paper. I gathered together a few supplies, paper and pencil; and began drawing, and was actually pleased to see it coming together similar to how I saw it in my mind's eye. I didn't get very far before I ran out of eraser, though. Not that I over-used it, mind you, but it was just a rough stump on the end of the pencil.

"Hmmmm," I thought, "how odd for a nearly brand-new pencil to have so little eraser on it." No sweat though, it would take more than this little setback to shake my Muse. I got up and dug through our writing utensil basket that contains literally close to 100+ pens and pencils. I soon discovered that not ONE STINKING LOUSY pencil had even a sniff of eraser on it!!! My irritation mounting, I start yanking drawers and baskets as I realize what has happened. It dawned on me that one of my little precious ones has developed an obsession for eating pencil erasers! And all the many times I have seen Stu come in the office and dump out the basket, it wasn't just messy childishness, he was really trying to appease the big monkey on his back, the little junky! Does this just happen to everybody? Come on; can't I even escape for a little while after they are all in bed???

So I am pleased to announce the formation of a new support group that I intend to start online. It will be called P.E.N.C.I.L. It stands for: Pencil Eraser are Not for Consumption In Littl'uns. We will focus on making sure that pencils are well out of reach of all children, and ensure that all will be equipped with "eraser locks". We will lobby for a minimum age limit for being able to purchase pencils that carry erasers, (I'm thinking 8 years old ought to do it) and most importantly, people: Parents, please sit your children down at an early age and have that "talk" about pencil erasers! Below is a small example of what your household pencil drawer will look like if this habit is left unchecked. And worst of all, if your children's eraser habit is left unchecked, you may be left wasting a 1/2 hour writing a stupid blog instead of drawing a sketch of your back yard. Daniel

Foster Family Babysitting Service, LLC

Hello,

Our names are Grace, Emma, and Isaiah. We are pleased to announce our new babysitting service. We take good care of our baby brother while Mom goes to garage sales, and while our most excellent, intelligent, good-looking, caring, and diligent father does really important stuff around the house. We specialize in multitasking; we pride ourselves in being able to focus intensely on taking excellent care of the child while paying very slight attention to "Tom and Jerry." Please inspect these photos of our babysitting prowess. Thank you, and give us a call if we can serve you.

Used Car Salesmen

Just when I thought that I was scraping the bottom of the barrel talking about safety moniters, I had a recent run in with a used car salesman (from here on, I will refer to them as U.C.S.). While it seems cliche to talk trash on how smug and sleazy UCS's are, doesn't it seem more cliche to be a UCS that is really smug and sleazy? It isnt at all that I think that the job itself is a bad one, and could see if one were really a "car guy" that it would be a fun job. I got stuck in one of our big dealerships with a guy that obviously thought he was holding all the cards.

I made him an offer, and he told me that the "way we do it is you sign a bunch of papers to show us you're interested and committed and then we negotiate". Of all the cheeky morons! I asked him if he was serious, that I showed that I was commited, then I asked him to lower the price? He gave a big UCS smile, leaned his chair back with his hands over his head and stated "That is just how it is done anymore". It made me so mad that he didn't even feel obligated to try to not appear like a sleaze-ball, that I didn't even feel the same obligation that I felt toword the gentleman in Wal-mart mentioned in a much earlier post. I just told him "you can keep it, thank you so much" and left.

Safety Bully!

In my previous post about corporate safety monkeys, I rail against the moronic mindset of large corporations that use the supposition that if a person gets injured performing a task, then that task or the tools he was using to perform that task must be inherently evil and therefore requires a a rule banning said task or said tools. At this rate, in another 20 years we will all be lying down on our backs 24/7, too scared to roll over in order to prevent bed sores for fear of straining muscles. Hmmm, but what if I could harness that power and use it for good? Well, at least for MY good...

In a similar experience I had with a large energy corporation (Con-Edison) I realized that I needed a good deal of room in order to unload a semi, and then load the roof with the crane. I suggested that we close the parking lot in order to do so. I was told very bluntly: "No way are we closing this parking lot for your convenience." I just threw out sort of half-heartedly that it "might just be a little safer?" and THEN stuff started to happen, by golly!! Seriously, 20 minutes later the parking lot was completely empty, they had gone around all over the campus and found the owners of each car, and got them to move them. AHAHAHAHHAHA!!! Feel the Power!!! FEEL the SAFETY!!!!!

All because I mentioned the "S" word; if something went wrong, they would fear liability. Well anyway, enough about safety and stupidity, I'll try to find something funny to write about. Maybe I will fall into a big vat of poop or something. That would be amusing, right?

sissification of us...

My last post made me think of other things that were different than they are today. One thing we had were large and small chunks of broken asphalt in our playground from what apparently used to be a parking lot. We found that these worked nicely for hurling at each other when engrossed in a battle. We also had steel monkey bars, steel slides, wood and steel teeter-totters with real dirt underneath, and swings without seat belts. Of course, that was about all we had, but we didn't think it strange. I drove by the old schoolhouse recently and there is literally nothing there that was there a mere 2o+ years ago, and not because it wore out, I'm sure. I feel confident that the safety police decided that all the students' IQ would raise 40-50 points if they were sliding down brightly colored plastic slides very slowly, rather than galvanized steel slides very quickly.

The reason I mention these things is because I spent about 2 hours inside a local food-grade manufacturing plant the other day, doing a 15 minute repair. Well, I should say that I spent 15 minutes doing the repair, and the other 1 & 3/4 hours doing a safety course/orientation class so that I know the basics of how not to hurt myself. Included in these things were: (and remember: 15 minute repair, and never once going inside the building to do it!)

1. any electrical devise I plug in must be "locked, GFCI'ed, and tagged out" (whatever that means).

2. at all times, I need hard hat, safety glasses, and gloves. The orientator did actually specify that it was OK to remove gloves to go to restroom. No other safety equipment is to be removed during restroom exercises.

3. any work done more than 4' off the ground requires a safety harness.

4. here is the real kicker: the weapons policy. Of course we couldn't take guns in there, but NO KNIVES!!! Construction workers-no knives!!! No pocketknife, no utility knife, either! the only sharp object I was allowed to have was a backwards-loaded spring action utility knife that automatically retracts when you aren't holding the blade out. Then he urged us repetitively to "cut away from your body".

Now I am all in favor of not getting hurt, but I think it is a ridiculous notion to say that grown men, professionals in their trades are not responsible enough to handle pocket knives. As I thought of how these corporate safety monkeys thought up these rules for people who are trying to get things done, it occurred to me the expressions of shock that would have registered on their faces had they seen the recesses at A.G.S. Unharnessed and unsecured minors climbing a ladder to the top of a 12' slide, carelessly flinging aside the "3 points of contact to the ladder at all times rule". As they get to the top, they have no guard rail, then as the other children are carelessly stacked up on the ladder behind the first one, they recklessly take the plunge done the incredibly steep slide with out any more than a few inches of protective railing on either side, coming to a complete drop off of about 24" at the bottom. From there, they race to a veritable paradise of potential cranial concussions: the Jungle Gym or Monkey bars, a 10' tall, towering edifice to honor the god of dangerous living for little kids. And then the teeter-totter: how safety officers all over the world would shudder if they saw children disembark from the low side of the teeter-totter without making a request for a written permit from corporate, and without signing out? Not to mention, that all was often done with a knife in our pocket... just like I did that day. I just kept my mouth shut through orientation, though; there's a part of me that just enjoys a little rebellion. Anyway, it wasn't very sharp. I guess I get that rebellion from my late Uncle Sam that once proudly showed me how he got a nice sized pocket knife through airport security in a post 9/11 world. Shh...

cell phones and such

This afternoon at lunch time, my kids spent a good deal of time trying to wrap their heads around how old and how stupid us "old people" are. They were telling each other that back when I was a kid, that "phones were just nailed to the wall" and "that they didn't even know that they could just unplug them and take them with them." It was also discussed that we didn't even have computers. That isn't entirely true, though; I think I was in 4Th or 5Th grade when we got the world's first computer at Arlington Grade School. It was really exciting at first, but the polish sort of wore off when it just sat there in the hallway for a couple years until Jon Trembley figured out how to turn it on. Then a year after that, the eight-graders made a program that let you vote on who was going to be president. All the students filed by our single computer and pressed either "y" or "n", then at the end of the day, it gave us the results. Whoa, soooo amazing; how we were impressed when Reagan really did win the election, just as our green glowing computer prophesied.

But then we also were permitted to get out and drag the limbs off the road when they fell down in the way of the school bus, and sometimes I was allowed to divvy out corporal punishment to younger kids that badly needed it. That is maybe the beginning of my "social obligation" spoken of in the Walmart Post in the archives. There was one bus driver that seemed to love it when you got up out of your seat and into the aisle: he would just lock up the brakes and send you flying. My bus driver would threaten me by raising an eyebrow while reaching for, then shaking at me (what seemed like at the time) a 48 oz. ball peen hammer while looking you in the eye through the big mirror. It was enough to keep me in check, but he informed me later that he used it to check air pressure on the inside tires of rear dually. Well, duh, sure, when I think about it, now... but could you imagine a bus driver waving a hammer in a threatening way now at kids? They would shoot him on the site (well, actually that would be way too violent; more likely they would prop his eyelids open and show him repetitive pictures of violence and make him listen to L. V. Beethoven very loudly like in "A Clockwork Orange") Anyway, that's probably enough reminiscing about the "old days" from someone only 33 years old. Maybe more on this later, though.